Tag Archives: Palm Beach Florida

Hammer: Look, in a little while I’m going to hold an auction sale at Cocoanut Manor, the suburb terrible or beautiful. You must come over. There’s going to be entertainment, sandwiches, and the auction. If you don’t like auctions, we can play contract. Here it is – Cocoanut Manor – 42 hours from Times Square by railroad. 1,600 miles as the crow flies and 1,800 as the horse flies. There you are – Cocoanut Manor, glorifying the American sewer and the Florida sucker. It’s the most exclusive residential district in Florida. Nobody lives there. And the climate – ask me about the climate. I dare you.

Mrs. Potter: Very well – how is the…

Hammer: I’m glad you brought it up. Our motto is Cocoanut Beach, no snow, no ice, and no business.

Scene from The Cocoanuts (1929), and Mike must think I’m nuts for even bothering to mention that. But why a duck? Answer me that, Mr. Schilling. I thought I was the one doing the shilling around here. A fine thing.

“Most people, I believe,” Alice said, “will just go for the baubles, because they won’t want to spend an awful lot of money this late in the season. Just so they take home some little thing. But I will bid on this necklace, and I’ll bid low, and because it’s so valuable it won’t come on the block until very late, when everybody else will already have their little something, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I get it for my opening bid.

“How clever you are, Alice,” Jack said, and patted her shoulder before he went back to his seat and his Wall Street Journal.

She continued to smile at the necklace in the photo. “What a coup,” she said. “To get that necklace cheap, and to wear it on every occasion.” Like all very wealthy women, Alice had strange cold pockets of miserliness. Her eyes shone as she looked across the table at Jack. “It will be an absolute steal,” she said.

“But you don’t care if I live or die,” she said, “do you?”

“I’d rather you were dead,” he said.

She thought about that. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No.”

“Because of the bargaining chip.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a little more truthful than I’m ready for,” she said.

He shrugged.

Let me state for the record that I don’t hate this book at all. I have read it four times, and enjoyed it each time, in spite of all my nitpicking. Hell, if you can’t enjoy a good bit of nitpicking sometimes, you should stop perusing fiction altogether, and were probably born into the wrong reality altogether. This is not a world of Platonic Ideals. I’m far from convinced any such world exists, but this ain’t it, that I know.

But having typed that, I am forced to ponder the unavoidable truth that Parker is, in certain respects, Westlake’s ideal–or rather, Stark’s. Westlake likes things messy, imperfect, the daily scrum of human existence, with all its inherent absurdity–and the potential for love and laughter and self-realization that lies within all that. Stark also aspires to self-realization, but he does so by striking a cold clinical contrast between Parker and the rest of us; never fully knowing ourselves, always caught between what we wish we were, and what we really are.

Why is Parker so quietly and implacably enraged when he’s shortchanged by his colleagues at the start of this book? They’ve promised to pay him back with interest, once the big heist they’re planning is done (having failed to inform him this might happen upfront). Why go to such extraordinary pains to acquire a small fortune through small thefts, simply in order to create a false identity, so he can go to a place he normally would avoid, risk death and (even worse) imprisonment for the chance to erase the insult by killing these men who mean him no harm, taking their ill-gotten gains for himself as restitution? Why not let it go, for God’s sake? It’s just 21k–at the dawn of the 21st century. Claire probably spends more than that per annum on clothes.

Why react this way? Because in Parker’s mind, this is not how it’s done. You pull a heist with some people, you share the proceeds in the manner agreed to upfront, you go your separate ways. No exceptions. He would have had more respect for them if they’d just tried to kill him to get his share, though the response would be no different. Parker doesn’t know from Platonic Ideals, because that’s an intellectual concept, and he’s about instinct. He is, in reality, what someone like Plato can only dream about. Maybe more along the lines of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy than Platonic Ideals, but it’s all Greek to him.

So obviously to me this novel does not properly reflect the Stark Ideal established in my mind by the previous books. It lacks the proper balance of elements. It asks questions of Parker that should never be asked; presents answers to those questions that he would never think to himself, let alone utter aloud. This is why I have such a bad reaction to it. But my response to that is simply to have a good time nitpicking all the inconsistencies and false notes in the book, while acknowledging the many genuinely fine moments within it. I don’t have to go find Richard Stark and kill him. I mean, even if I could find him, he’d probably end up killing me.

When last we saw Parker, he was lying face down in a swamp in the Florida Everglades, having been shot in the back with a .30-06 rifle, by one of a pair of killers sent to find and eliminate him, so that he can’t divulge the identity of a man whose identity remains a mystery to him. One of those guys who makes murder the answer to everything. One of those pairs of chuckling assassins that used to frequent many a Westlake Nephew book. And in just a few seconds, they’re going to wish they’d stuck with the Nephews.

But this being Part 3 in a Parker novel, we’re not going to find out what happened right away. Chapter 1 is from the perspective of Parker’s three former cohorts, Melander, Carlson, and Ross. They had told Parker to go home and wait for their call, so they’d know he wasn’t after them. Four days later they call. Nobody’s home.

What follows is an irritable debate on the admittedly complex ethical strictures of organized armed robbery. Melander, the mercurial fidgety idea man of the group, feels like they did nothing wrong. Carlson, the pragmatic veteran, says if they’d done the same thing to him as they did to Parker, he’d say they robbed him–they should have considered the consequences of bringing in a fourth man who might have to be shortchanged, before they went ahead and did it. Ross, the peacemaker, says maybe they better just go to Parker’s house in New Jersey and check up on him. And if he’s not there, maybe they can grab his woman and use her as leverage.

Everybody agrees this is a good idea. Until they get to the house and find it deserted. They spend days there, waiting for Parker, Claire, somebody, to show up. All they ever find is places Parker had cached guns to use on anybody who came after him at home. There’s even one behind a sliding panel by the garage door. Each is increasingly aware they are dealing with an ice cold methodical planner, and that there’s a target stitched on each of their backs.

They decide to head back to Florida. It’s really cold in Northwestern New Jersey in winter, even if you’re not right off a lake. They put everything back the way it’s supposed to be at Claire’s house so nobody will know they were there. They get back to their Palm Beach house, and everything is the way it’s supposed to be, so they figure Parker wasn’t there. Not so good at making connections, these guys.

(More fun with nitpicks: Parker is told at the start of the book that the trio needed a fourth man on the Palm Beach job, and if it’s not going to be him, it’ll be somebody else. Guess what? There’s nobody else, they just do the job–a really big complicated risky job–with three men. No explanation of how they were able to rejigger the plan to make that work. Just one mistake among many. Westlake is rarely this sloppy, and never when he’s working as Stark. What was going on when he wrote this book?)

Chapter 2 is Leslie Mackenzie musing on her life, the sequence of events that led her to throw in her lot with Parker. She grew up poor in a place where you’re surrounded by wealth. She got into a bad marriage with a guy who talked big, but talk was all it was. Her mother and sister are an embarrassment and a burden to her, and she’d dearly love to get her hands on a lot of cash, so she can leave them behind, start over.

Sex has never been much fun for her, but she is (of course), starting to become attracted to Parker, wondering what he’d be like in bed. Truthfully, her situation isn’t that desperate. She’s very good at her job, and her job is selling luxury housing to people who can afford it. She just isn’t happy with where and who she is. She’d like to be somebody else, somewhere else. For that she needs a score. And for a score, she needs somebody like Parker. And for this subplot to work out satisfactorily, for Leslie and us, Parker needs to be sexually available to her, at least on a temporary basis, but he’s not. Frustrating.

He is, however, still alive. You won’t believe how that happens. Seriously, you won’t. Chapter 3 is from the perspective of a 23 year old paramilitary grunt named Elvis Clagg. You know that right-wing militia movement that started getting a lot of attention in the 90’s? Seems like some people got started much earlier than that. Warning, racial epithets ahead. Like you couldn’t hear worse at a meeting of the President’s closest advisors these days.

Captain Bob Hardawl himself had founded the CRDF not long after he’d come back to Florida from Nam and had seen that the niggers and kikes were about to take over everywhere from the forces of God, and that the forces of God could use some help from a fella equipped with infantryman training.

Armageddon hadn’t struck yet, thank God, but you just knew that sooner or later it would. You could read all about it on the Internet, you could hear it in the songs of Aryan rock, you could see it in the news all around you, you could read it in all the books and magazines that Captain Bob insisted every member of the CRDF subscribe to and read.

That was an odd thing, too. Reading had always been tough for Elvis Clagg. It had been one of the reasons he’d dropped out of school at the very first opportunity and got that job at the sugar mill that paid shit and immediately gave him a bad cough like an old car. But now that he had stuff he wanted to read, stuff he liked to read, why, turned out, he was a natural at it.

They oughta figure that out in the schools. Quit giving the kids all that Moby-Dick shit and give them The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and you’re gonna have you some heavy-duty readers.

I’m sure that option is being discussed as we speak, but leaving that aside, Elvis was out on maneuvers in the Everglades, with the rest of the CRDF, and would you believe they just happened to witness Parker being shot? Why, sure you would.

And while there’s no particular reason for them to get involved, the fact is that you get bored marching around in formation with shiny well-oiled automatic weapons all day, and never having anyone to use them on. One excuse is pretty much as good as another. Captain Bob yells something at the thugs. The thug with the .30-06 rifle panics and shoots two of the uniformed thugs armed with Uzis. Problem is, there’s twenty-six of them left, and the guy with the rifle didn’t shoot Captain Bob, who starts barking orders, and the end result is that Parker’s abductors end up getting shot 13 times apiece. Dead and unlucky.

Chapter 4 introduces the 67 year old Alice Prester Young, and her 26 year old husband, Jack. Alice is rich, and Jack is not. That didn’t really need explaining. And I’m not sure this story really needed telling. Westlake wants to satirize Palm Beach society, and that’s a worthy ambition in itself, but how well does it mesh with the story being told? Not very. I strongly suspect this is left-over story material from something Westlake started writing that wasn’t originally going to be by Richard Stark.

Alice is reading in the paper at breakfast about how a Daniel Parmitt is in the hospital, in critical condition, after being abducted and shot in the Everglades, and she’s asking Jack if they know any such person. Jack doesn’t know, doesn’t care. She goes on from that subject to discussing the upcoming auction of Miriam Hope Clendon’s jewelry, as you can see up top–a certain necklace she’s had her eye on since time immemorial. Jack’s only interest in that stems from his figuring he’ll inherit it someday. We shall be hearing from both of them again, so on to Chapter 5.

Chapter 5 introduces pretty nearly the only non-asshole POV character in the book who isn’t Parker or Leslie; Trooper Sergeant Jake Farley of the Snake River County Sheriff’s department, who is working on the strange case of Daniel Parmitt. He’s irritated on several counts–first of all, those dangerous idiots of the CRDF finally killed somebody, like he always knew they would, but he can’t arrest them, because it was self-defense.

Secondly, he just can’t figure out the angle on this Parmitt. They have the ID papers Parker bought from the late Mr. Norte, which are holding up to scrutiny so far–unlike the more resourceful Leslie, they haven’t thought to run a credit check, because obviously rich oil men from Texas have great credit. Point is, why does somebody like this get waylaid by two men who were self-evidently professional killers? Something’s rotten in the state of Florida (pretty much the default setting there, and not just in crime fiction).

Parmitt was badly shot, and drowned to boot, before the CRDF guys practiced their CPR on him (breaking a few ribs in the process). And yet, miraculously, it looks like he’s going to recover. When Farley questions Parmitt, something about the way the man’s eyes focus on him from his hospital bed makes Farley feel like he’s the one in danger. Unnerving. But no question, the man is still very weak.

Leslie has shown up, wanting to see her friend and client, whom she suggestively suggests may be more than just a friend and client. Leslie quickly figures out Farley, who has a thing for amply proportioned blondes, and is currently married to one, is going to be knocked off balance if she brings sex into the equation, and it works like a charm. He gives her a few minutes alone with Parker, in Chapter 6.

As soon as she tells Parker that the attack on Parmitt made the papers, he knows the man who sent the first two killers will send more, right to the hospital, and there’s no police guard on his room (nor can he request one without making explanations he’s in no position to make). And at any time the cops might take his fingerprints–which will lead back to a dead prison camp guard in the 1960’s, among other things. He tells Leslie she needs to get him out of there, without anyone seeing them leave. She’s taken aback, but tells him she’ll figure something out.

Chapter 7 is set at the site of the auction, the house of Mrs. Helena Stockworth Fritz, who is deeply involved in getting the place ready for the social event that will officially make her the new queen of Palm Beach. Then all of a sudden these two common workmen we recognize as Melander and Ross show up with some amplifiers they say they were tasked with deliverying there. Irritating, but just so they’ll go away, she has them let in, and as promised they stick the equipment where it won’t get in anyone’s way. Until it does.

Chapter 8 is Leslie pressuring her mother and sister into aiding her in springing Parker from the hospital. Her sister Loretta, as mentioned, is mentally disabled, and her mother’s no bright light either. They’re both very nervous about participating in this escape plan. But they buckle when she threatens to move out–her income is all that’s holding them up. And we know she’s planning to move out as soon as she gets her money.

Chapter 9 is the evening of the heist, and switches around a bit, starting with Alice Prester-Young getting her jewels out of the bank, where the Palm Beach elite keep most of their valuables most of the time. They have dressing rooms, mirrors with grey tinting to disguise the marks of time on the faces and bodies of those who look in them. Alice feels she’s earned all of this, even though the entire point of being in Palm Beach society is that you didn’t earn any of it.

Farley is talking about Parmitt with an FBI agent named Mobley, and they agree his story about not remembering anything about how or why he was attacked doesn’t add up, he’s holding something back. Mobley suggests Farley get Parmitt’s fingerprints to him, and he’ll check them for priors. Farley agrees.

Leslie is driving to the hospital with her sister, in a Plymouth Voyager (nice little nod to The Ax there). They pass a fire engine. Guess who’s riding on it?

Then we get a bit more social satire with Mrs. Fritz, learning that even within the 1% there’s a class system, and she sees herself as being at the very top now–too good to even go to the bank to get her jewels and furs with the rest of the hoi polloi, as she thinks of them. She uses the panic room her late husband installed for that. And she doesn’t need any gray-backed mirror. She likes the person looking back at her just fine the way she is. She knows herself better than the others. But she still doesn’t see those amplifiers the grimy workmen delivered, that somehow never got hooked up to the sound system.

Chapter 10 is Leslie and Loretta springing Parker from the hospital by putting him in the wheelchair Loretta was pretending to need. Loretta’s actually having a fun time with the caper now. Leslie is still worried about getting her money, and starting to feel protective towards ‘Daniel’, in spite of herself. But when she asks him what he plans to do tomorrow night, his answer is “Kill some people.”

Chapter 11, surprisingly enough, isn’t about Donald Trump’s financial affairs. It’s another multi-POV chapter, and the only thing of real consequence that happens in it is that the hitman sent to kill Parker in his hospital bed gets there only to find out the bed is empty, and he’s about to be arrested by Deputy Sheriff Farley (showing great presence of mind when he finds the man in Parker’s room, pretending to be a doctor). Farley is delighted to finally have somebody he can question without a lot of doctors making a fuss. Less delighted that Daniel Parmitt has disappeared, but he’ll worry about that later.

Chapter 12 is all Leslie and Parker. He’s recovering from his injuries with astonishing rapidity–not Hugh Jackman with adamantium claws fast, but fast. He’s staying at a condo she’s already sold, that the new occupants won’t be occupying for weeks yet. She’s reached the point where she’s actually trying to talk him out of heisting the heist, but of course nobody can ever talk Parker out of anything. She can’t understand why he’s so much more intent on killing these three guys who never tried to hurt him than he is on dealing with the man who has sent hired killers after him. Yeah, what’s up with that, Parker?

“The other guy’s gonna self-destruct,” he told her, “He has to, he’s too stupid to last. He’s somebody used to power, not brains. But these three are mechanics, we had an understanding, they broke it. They don’t do that.” He shrugged. “It makes sense or it doesn’t.”

Only time I’ve ever felt like arguing with Parker’s logic (not the part about somebody used to power instead of brains; that’s borne out by the headlines we read every morning now).

Actually, only time offhand I can think of Parker arguingfor his own logic. Why does he even care what Leslie thinks? The mere fact that he’s making an argument means that he knows it doesn’t make sense, which we know from several past books is something that always irritates him. But in The Seventh, the most noteworthy of those books where he’s knocked off-kilter, he was doing something that didn’t make sense because, in part, a girl he was starting to like had been skewered with a sword by The Amateur.

There was no time to stop and think in that story, everything happened over a very short time frame, which is why that book works so well. And The Amateur had tried to kill Parker, had tried to frame him with the law, had taken all of his money, and was certainly not promising to pay him back later. Given all that, it made perfect sense that Parker’s behavior didn’t make sense, least of all to him.

But in this story he’s had weeks to think about what he’s doing, and now he’s clearly in no shape to take on three armed men, or three unarmed men for that matter. He’s going to do it anyway, because he can’t help himself. This seems less like a wolf in human form acting on instinct than a really hardcore case of OCD. The Sheldon Cooper of Crime.

Chapter 13 is the heist. And a good one, I might add. The gaudy trio use their favored strategy of pyrotechnic distraction–they should probably quit the heisting game, and try putting together a magic act in Vegas. The amplifiers contained incendiary rockets. As anticipated, the rich people forget their innate dignity and stampede like cattle. The trio appear disguised as firemen, in the stolen fire engine–then depart as frogmen, wetsuits under their slickers, over the sea wall into the sea, with the jewels. Next stop, the safe house. Which isn’t going to be as safe as advertised.

Meanwhile, back at the Fritz, the whole soap opera subplot of Alice and Jack concludes with her desperately seeking Jack in the smoke and confusion, afraid he’s been killed–then seeing him carrying the luscious young trophy wife of another elderly rich fool out of harm’s way, and realizing in an instant that he’s just been patiently waiting for Alice to die, and entertaining himself with a woman his own age while he waits. Which Alice probably could have forgiven easily enough, if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that his first thought when all hell broke loose was to save his lover, not his wife.

He looks back at Alice, the corpus delectable in his arms, and can’t think of a single thing to say. He’s fond of her and all, he enjoys her company, he didn’t mind servicing her sexagenarian sexual needs, wasn’t bothered by the snickering gossip that inevitably surrounds any such marriage, but in a crisis, his true feelings betrayed him–and her. And their whole tidy mutually beneficial arrangement is exposed for the tawdry sham it always was (same goes for his lover, whose husband is now processing the same ugly truth as Alice–money can buy you everything but youth, and youth is worth all the rest of it combined, wasted on the young though it may be).

And that’s a perfectly good short story, for Playboy, maybe, but what the hell’s it doing in a Parker novel? We won’t see any of these people again, and we won’t miss them either. At times, this book feels like a jumble sale of ideas Westlake wanted to do something with, but never found the proper outlet for. On to Part 4, eight chapters, just a bit over fifty pages, and blissfully free of any such distractions. But sadly, not free of some pretty serious problems, and one outright blunder on the part of the author.

Parker has painfully made his way back into Melander & Co’s hideout–last time he was in there, he fixed things so he could get in there without triggering any alarms, or leaving any trace. But last time he didn’t have a bullet wound and several broken ribs, and wasn’t weak as the proverbial kitten. Still, this kitten has claws, and a gun stashed under a Parson’s table. And he’ll have the element of surprise. Or maybe not.

The trio get back from their heist, laughing over how well it went–one of them even saw a dolphin as they swam back to their private beach. They’re improvising too much–it only occurred to Ross at the last possible moment that they needed to sweep the sand behind them, to cover up their footprints. The heat from this heist will be intense, like nothing they ever faced beore. They never did fully process how intense. Rich people don’t like getting robbed (They’re supposed to be the robber barons here! Well, their forebears were, anyway.) In a closed-off place that is entirely controlled by the rich, the cops will be relentless and methodical in tracking down the thieves–or lose their jobs.

But right away they get distracted–by Leslie. Parker curses to himself when he hears it happening. She couldn’t just sit back and wait, she had to come in and look, and they found her. They assume she’s Claire, looking for Parker. Well, they’re half-right. They start interrogating her, slapping her around a little, and then when they lock her in the same room Parker is hiding in, she inadvertently tips them off to his presence. Parker thinks to himself sourly that she’d been better than most amateurs, until it mattered.

Melander isn’t sure whether he wants Parker dead or not. Obviously Parker’s not in great shape, and it’s three against one (he’s not counting ‘Claire’). Parker tells one of his usual lies when he’s faced with guys he wants to kill who are currently in a position to kill him–he was just making sure he’d get his money. They don’t really believe him, but they can sleep on it. And while they sleep, Parker keeps getting a bit stronger, every hour.

The plan, not that it matters now, was that he’d kill them in their sleep. Won’t work now, and far from clear it ever would have worked. But that plan is dead. Parker waits to see what new plan can be salvaged from this mess. And Leslie looks for some way to prove herself to him again.

Next morning, all plans turn to crap. The cops come calling. Melander puts on his faux Texas accent, tries to assure them he’s what he pretends to be, but the fact is, in the harsh light of a major manhunt, his act just doesn’t play anymore. The house is largely unfurnished, in bad shape, there’s a dumpster outside, no contractors at work, and they haven’t even applied for a phone yet.

This isn’t how real rich people live, camped out like squatters in a derelict property–certainly not in Palm Beach. Parker was right all along about this plan being a disaster waiting to happen. The cops, who work in Palm Beach every day, can easily sense Melander doesn’t belong here, that something’s very wrong with this picture. They insist on coming in to look around.

(The absolute worst mistake in this book is something I never noticed before now–see, back in Chapter 1, Part 3, we’re told that when the trio decided to try contacting Parker in New Jersey, they called from the ‘freshly installed phone’ at the mansion in Palm Beach–that very phone the cops now say they never even applied for. That’s not their mistake, it’s Stark’s. Stark doesn’t make mistakes like this. An honest-to-god plothole in a Parker novel. What the hell was going on with the writing of this book? What kind of pressure was Westlake under when he produced it?)

Melander can’t very well tell the law to come back with a search warrant–he does that, they’ll have a cordon around the house in five minutes, the warrant in ten, and SWAT teams in place. He realizes he’s got no choice but to shoot it out–just two of them. He and his buddies can figure out Plan B once the cops are dead.

But Parker’s advance planning comes into play now. He disabled all their guns days ago. Melander pulls the trigger and nothing happens. Except he gets shot to pieces by edgy lawmen, naturally.

Parker and Leslie had been brought downstairs for breakfast. Leslie is sitting at that very table Parker duct-taped his trusty little Sentinel revolver beneath. Parker quietly let Leslie know about the gun, hoping she’d get it to him, but Carlson sees her with the gun in her hand, aims his shotgun at her, and of course that doesn’t work either, but Leslie doesn’t know that (Parker understandably didn’t want to trust her with any further information).

In the ensuing shitstorm, Parker hits Ross with a chair, knocking him into view of the cops, who gun him down with alacrity. Leslie, terrified out of her wits, empties the Sentinel into a confused Carlson. The trio is gaudy in a different way now.

Parker grabs the bags with the jewelry, and goes out the back, signaling Leslie with his eyes that she should say nothing about his ever having been there. He’s still in tremendous pain, and can’t go very far, but he manages to get over the fence surrounding the property, and into a decent enough hiding place, assuming there’s no major search of the area. And then he passes out.

By the time he wakes up, the house is abandoned again. He goes back inside, helps himself to the food and beer his deceased captors stocked the fridge with. Cops come in a few times to poke around, but they aren’t looking for anyone, so he just avoids them in the big rambling house. After a few days of this routine, he’s feeling a lot better–now he just needs to make contact with Leslie one last time.

And here she is–something of a local heroine now. Reminiscent of Claire at the end of The Rare Coin Score, she told the law a good story, used her feminine wiles on her male interrogators, and not only is she not in any trouble, she’s now got the exclusive right to show the house to potential new buyers. So her presence there isn’t going to arouse any suspicion. Parker is pleased with her–she’d never make it long in his business, but in the end, she proved her worth to him. She can live. And she is, of course, due a share of the spoils.

She tells him all the accounts he set up as Parmitt have been frozen. He expected that, isn’t bothered by it. He tells her he’s going soon, will leave the gems in her keeping. She’s amazed he’ll trust her that much, but he reminds her, there is no way she could possibly sell them herself without getting caught. He’ll send a fence to see her, and he figures her end will come to around 400k, give or take. We were told at the start of the book that it would take three fences to unload all this swag, but even I’m getting bored with the nitpicking now.

In the Pre-Claire era, this would be the part of the book where Parker and Leslie hook up. But those days are gone, and Parker feels like he somehow has to explain this to Leslie, why he’s not going to take out his post-heist horniness on her, which she would be more than willing to let him do. For the record, I’m totally fine with the emotions he’s expressing here; not so fine with the fact that he is expressing them. Hey, if this heist thing ever falls through, he could always take a job with Hallmark.

He said, “You don’t want to know about Claire, Leslie.”

“Of course I do,” she said.

He looked at her, and decided to finish that part once and for all. “Claire is the only house I ever want to be in,” he said. “All her doors and windows are open, but only for me.”

A blush climbed Leslie’s cheeks, and she stepped back, looking confused. “You’re probably anxious to see her again,” she said, mumbling, going through the motions. “I’ll see you at eight.”

The plan is she comes to pick him up, drive him to Miami, where Claire is waiting. But plans are always subject to change. Farley shows up at the house, still trying to figure out what the hell happened. He never bought Leslie’s story. He knows Parmitt is tied up in this some way. Parker avoids Farley easily, but waits for him in his car. He’s still got some business left to attend to, and Farley could be useful there.

So Farley comes back to the car, sees Parker, and is taken aback by the man’s sheer gall. They have a little talk, in which Parker admits to no crime, but fills Farley in on why those two hoods tried to kill him in the Everglades. Tells him about this guy, probably from Latin America, probably a general or a drug lord looking for a cushy safe retirement home in the states, tried to cover his tracks by the most stupid brutal means imaginable, because that’s the only way he ever knew to deal with problems–and in so doing, made himself more vulnerable. In so doing, he made Parker his enemy.

The deal is, Parker gives Farley enough information so that he can go to his FBI friend, knowing how to prove the papers Norte gave this man are fake, and in a short time, they can take him down for keeps–a big arrest, very nice for everyone’s careers. If they somehow screw it up, fail to get him, Parker will take the guy out himself. But he doesn’t think that will be necessary. He also teases Farley about his obvious attraction to Leslie. Well, I guess there’s a little matchmaker in everyone.

Farley drops Parker off in Miami. Even gives him a quarter to call Claire with. He would still like to arrest this Parmitt guy, even though he doesn’t exactly have any concrete charges–he could find something if he wanted. The bloodhound in him can smell the wolf in Parker, is feeling the pull to do something about it. Parker reminds him they’re alone. “I’m armed,” Farley says. “So am I,” Parker responds. And flexes his huge hands, which are in easy reach of Farley’s throat. Farley says he’ll always wonder if he could have taken Parker. Parker ends the book by saying “Look on the bright side–this way you have an always.”

Not a bad ending. Not a bad book. Unless you compare it to all the others. Maybe someday we’ll know what happened here, the explanation for all the mistakes and false notes, but I doubt anything will ever explain why Hollywood producers would pick this book to kick off what was supposed to be a long-running franchise, starring a short bald Englishman as Parker (actually named Parker, something Westlake would never have countenanced had he still been around), and a skinny blonde Australian whose name I can never remember as Claire. And Nick Nolte as her dad, who is Parker’s mentor. Seriously. This happened.

But Jennifer Lopez wasn’t a bad pick for Leslie. Even though I know she was only picked because the producers wanted her to do that striptease from Part 1. She looked right for Florida, and she certainly had the curves to play Leslie. But they screwed up that subplot as well. Trying to ‘fix’ the story, they made it ten times worse.

The producers of “Parker” (quotes intentional) were, whether they knew it or not, playing the role of the gaudy trio in this book; so confident of their abilities, so sure they had a perfect score planned, so sure Palm Beach (which they insisted on shooting in, driving up the budget) would be a goldmine for them. And in the end, it didn’t work out any better for them than it did for the movie stars. But it worked out fine for the Westlake estate. So that tracks. Can’t wait for the sequel. I really can’t. Because I’m not going to live that long, and neither is anyone else.

But pretty sure I’ll live long enough to review the next book in our queue, also a Parker, and vastly more satisfactory than this one, in every possible way. Parker is back in his proper habitat–both of them. City and wilderness. And still learning about this brave new world he’s been stuck back into. Adds another string to his bow, you might say.

Anyway, I’ll try to get Part 1 out next week. Anyone needs me before then, I’ll be in the garage, killing a man. Just kidding. I don’t have a garage.

All three were disappointed, gazing at him as though he’d let them down in some unexpected way. Carlson said, “Could I ask why?”

“You’ve got a place to stay,” Parker said. “If I ask, you’ll tell me how the mansion won’t trace back to any of you after it’s all over.”

“Sure,” Carlson said.

“But that isn’t the job,” Parker told him. “That’s nothing but the safe house. The job is still a whole lot of jewelry, twelve million dollars’ worth of jewelry, completely surrounded by people with weapons who don’t want you to get your hands on it. From this idea today–blow up something a little farther out of town as a distraction–I can see you guys like to be gaudy. That’s fine, fires and explosions have their place, but I think you mean to be gaudy in Palm Beach, and it won’t work out for you any better than it did for the movie stars.”

Fantastic fortune, thou deceitful light That cheats the weary traveler by night Though on a precipice each step you tread, I am resolved to follow where you lead.

Aphra Behn

September 23, 2011. Not much more than five years ago. Having been watching Payback a lot on TNT (curse you Maria Bello, and your warm knowing brown eyes), having gone from that to Point Blank on TCM (curse you Lee Marvin, and your cold fathomless blue-grey eyes), noting the differences and similarities in the stories, I was curious. I knew both movies were based on the same book. I knew Richard Stark was a pseudonym for some guy named Westlake.

The library I work for didn’t have The Hunter, or any of the First Sixteen, but we had three of the Final Eight, and the earliest was this. So I went up to the stacks and got it. September 23, 2011. Nobody’s charged it out since. Why bother when you can download? Honestly, I’m wondering if this library thing has a future to it.

I finished the book same day I took it out. I wasn’t what you’d call blown away, but I wanted more. I read the other two. They went fast too. I started hitting used bookstores, then ordering a lot of books online, vintage paperbacks, old hardcovers, U. of Chicago reprints. I ran out of Parker novels. I moved on to Grofield. Then Tobin. Then I started reading the books Westlake wrote as Westlake. I finally accepted that I’d have to read all of them, every last book on that long long bibliography, because somehow they were all connected, infinitely varied in subject, tone, approach, style–but all about the same thing, underneath. There was this subtle satiric sensibility at the back of all of them. I was, you might say, hooked.

I started discussing Westlake at The Violent World of Parker (now vanished from the internet, has anybody heard from Trent?), and Nick Jones’ Existential Ennui(still extant, but not talking about Westlake much these days). I published a guest article on the former site, in which I started promulgating my common sense observation that Parker is a wolf in human form, which was not uniformly well-received, as I recall.

I was my usual charming self, the very soul of diplomacy, on this and other subjects (including the awful movie made from this book I’m supposed to be reviewing now). The conversation grew heated, and I got banned from that site’s discussion forum. I been thrown out of worse joints for less reason. Trent and I remained on amicable terms, and he was later gracious enough to plug TWR on VWOP. Seems like a million years ago now.

Nick Jones, who had encouraged me to write that guest article, sort of tactfully hinted I was getting a mite too long-winded in my responses to his articles (oh now, I think that’s a bit unfair). He suggested I might want to start my own blog, an idea I dismissed out of hand as impractical and overly time-consuming. And 161 posts later (counting this one), here we stand, back where it all began. Thus endeth my rumination on causality, spare time, and the internet.

I believe this is the third or fourth time I’ve read Flashfire. That’s more often than I’ve read many of the other Parker novels; the ones that aren’t The Hunter, The Score, Slayground, etc. That’s partly because I wanted to compare the book and the movie. Partly because I read it first, and I reread all these books periodically.

But mainly because I want to understand why this one bothers me so much. Why it seems so much less right than any of the others, less than the sum of its parts. It’s by far the worst book in the series, one of the weakest novels Westlake ever wrote under any name. And still a good read for the most part. Westlake never wrote anything he didn’t put something of himself into. I’m here to try and understand him, and as I have said before, you often learn more about a writer from his or her misfires. The most important question to ask about a misfire is always “What was the writer aiming at when he/she pulled the trigger?”

Westlake’s peak as a writer came between 1962 (the year of The Hunter) and 1976 (the year of Dancing Aztecs). In that narrow window of time, he produced over fifty novels, along with quite a lot of less important work. A lifetime’s worth of writing compressed into fourteen years. What followed that productive era was often brilliant–he was a long way from finished, in fact he had almost as many books ahead of him as behind him (if you don’t count the sleaze paperbacks). But he was working more slowly, having a harder time coming up with workable ideas, ways he could top himself.

Stark and Coe, his two most important alter-egos, deserted him. The publishing market was no longer so well-suited to the kind of writing he did best. He had to change with the times, and the times were not to his taste (probably neither were most of the books being published, but when is that ever not true?). He was slotted as a humorous writer, and he liked writing in that vein, but it wasn’t enough for such a restless probing intellect.

Having resumed writing as Stark in the 90’s, he could not let the voice go again, as he had in the 70’s. He needed to keep going. But he struggled at finding ways for Parker to remain relevant in this not so brave new world he went on improbably surviving in. Dortmunder is equally anachronistic, leading to many an absurd sitution but Dortmunder is supposed to be absurd. Parker isn’t. Parker won’t stand for that. Dortmunder is Fortune’s Fool. Parker is nobody’s fool. Not even Stark’s.

So that’s all well and good, but how do we explain this book, in which Parker repeatedly does things that could not be more out of character? Impersonating a priest, then a rich foppish playboy. Making jokes that display a familiarity with contemporary popular culture. Pursuing a vendetta, which is very Parkeresque, but a vendetta so extreme and irrational that it stretches the boundaries of credulity, even within the context of this fictional reality. Revealing himself as a secret romantic; basically confessing, both to himself and a total stranger that he’s madly in love with Claire, who is only marginally in the book. Though at least we learn something about her reading habits.

And on the whole, you’d have to say Parker is less effective here than usual, making mistake after mistake, nearly dying as a result. He wins out in the end by virtue of his strange luck; a bit too strange for me this time.

Was Westlake testing Parker again, putting him to the question, as he had in past books where Parker seems to be acting out of character, but really isn’t? Or did he have an idea for a book involving some other criminal protagonist, and decided for various reasons (commercial, let’s say) that it needed to be a Parker novel?

Personally, I think this should have maybe been the next Grofield, but how many people even remembered Grofield by then? All those novels were out of print, and so were the Parker novels he’d first appeared in. That would change soon, but at the time of writing this one, Westlake only had two marketable series characters, and Dortmunder clearly wouldn’t work. Westlake wasn’t doing so well with one-shot characters of late. It’s just a theory, but I wonder if that’s the answer to this identity puzzle–it wasn’t originally going to be a Parker novel at all. Once it was, he tailored it to Parker as best he could, with very mixed results.

Whatever its origins, the final result is an interesting but frequently unsatisfying work, that still has that Starkian touch to it, which pulls you along, keeps your attention. Were that not the case, I wouldn’t be typing this now. So let me start typing the synopsis.

The book begins with a bank robbery, already in progress, in Nebraska. Except that Parker isn’t in the bank, he’s some distance away, throwing a Molotov cocktail through a plate glass window into a gas station convenience store, to serve as a distraction. The rest of the string is robbing the bank, and will use a stolen fire department vehicle to make their getaway, blending in with the real fire department.

And right away, I’ve got a problem–a firebomb is not a discriminating weapon, and casualties are not unlikely. Parker doesn’t like killing civilians, because it brings down too much heat from the law. Obviously the convenience store is open if the gas station is (that’s where he gets the gas), and there’s no mention of whether anybody is in there or not. Unusually sloppy work for Parker–and Stark. The movie skirted this entire issue by having somebody else set the diversionary blaze, and Parker is upset they killed somebody, which is even worse.

This is not Parker’s plan; he’s just been called in at the last minute to sub for Hurley (last seen in Butcher’s Moon), who recommended Parker after he dropped out. Parker got kind of a weird vibe from Hurley when they talked over the phone, but apparently he needed the work–some time must have passed since his previous two successful heists. My feeling is that this book actually takes place pretty close in time to when it was written, unlike the previous two. The internet is referenced, for the very first time in this series. The guy we see thinking about it briefly is no Wally Knurr. Not only is he not web-literate, he’s just barely lit-literate. The age of idiots online has dawned.

This is the last time we see Parker involved in a bank robbery (unless you count armored car heists, and I don’t). First time was in The Score, but they were knocking over a whole town, with Parker overseeing the operation, and the banks were both closed for the night so it’s not a typical job. Second was The Sour Lemon Score, the only classic daylight bank robbery in 24 books about a supposed bank robber. This is the third time, and he never even sees the bank. Or his money, except from a distance.

Melander, Carlson, and Ross. Parker never worked with these guys before. They like him, and they’re professional enough; maybe a bit too flashy, but good. And ambitious–they pulled this heist, they belatedly inform him, only to bankroll a much larger one elsewhere. They want him to come in on that. Parker hates surprises. But he’ll bite. What’s the job?

Jewelry. Twelve million dollars worth. They’ll only get ten cents on the dollar, and they’ll have to use three different fences to unload the merchandise. It’s going to be in Palm Beach, which for those of you who don’t know (and at this point in time, we all should know), is the world’s most overprivileged sandbar, off the coast of Florida. No way to drive on or off it without crossing a drawbridge–no crocodiles in the moat, but probably sharks, and lots of patrol boats. The bridges can all be closed very quickly if anything big happens, like a major robbery. Parker expresses a disinclination to participate. He’d like his money now, please. But wait, there’s more!

This is why they need the bank job money. They’re spending 100k to put a down-payment on a beachfront mansion formerly owned by two movie stars, who found out Palm Beach society frowns on new money, and on people who like to draw attention to themselves (hmm). The place got kind of trashed, and is definitely a fixer-upper, but all they need to fix here is an excuse for them to be in the richest part of Palm Beach, so they can hide out on the large fenced-off property, while the law looks for them in hotels and condos, and stops every boat on the water around that glorified sandbar.

A dodge we’ve seen many times before in these books; holing up near the site of the robbery until the heat fades, but Parker’s not buying it. Something will go wrong, somewhere down the line. Palm Beach and its pampered denizens are too well-protected, and there’s no escape route if things go sour. He’s out. Now fork over the cash. His share comes to $21,319. He does not take IOU’s.

There isn’t enough money. They knew going in that might happen, and what the consequences might be. Just a bit over 85k. They’ll have to borrow the remaining 15k, and pay back 30k. If they give Parker a quarter of the take, they’ll have to borrow even more, and it cuts into their profit margin too much. They promise he’ll get his share, and a bit extra, once the job is over. But for the moment, they’re going to have to stiff him. Give him a tiny stack of bills, which they say is in addition to his share, once they’re ready to give it to him. Like he’s the delivery boy, and this is his tip.

Understand, none of these guys has ever read a Parker novel. Andy Kelp could have told them what a terrible idea this is. They’re not like Mal Resnick, Auguste Menlo, George Uhl, George Liss, or any of the other former colleagues who just decided to take the whole boodle by eliminating the rest of the string. They won’t kill him. They have professional standards.

And his only response to that is to think about how stupid they are not to kill him. He’s sure as hell going to kill them, and take their entire Palm Beach score as back interest on the debt, assuming they succeed. The button in his head has been pushed. These are dead men walking, far as he’s concerned. He’s going to heist the heist. But for that he’s going to need a bankroll of his own.

Thus begins Parker’s One Man Crime Wave, which is for many the most enjoyable part of this book, though I found it oddly disappointing this time through, because it’s too rushed. Stark packs a lot of story into a small space, but this is too much, and I’m not even going to try to cover it all, because it would take too long.

Overall, not a terrible premise for a Parker novel, but it’s problematic on several counts. First of all, by pulling a series of small quick scores, on a gun shop, a check cashing place, two drug dealers, a multiplex theater, and some rich people’s houses in Texas, he quickly amasses almost as much money as he’d get if he actually had gone in with the gaudy trio on their big heist, and it had succeeded. So this isn’t about the money, because he could just go home to Claire with all that, and then wait for the guys to show up with his share, and he could kill them then if he wanted. Assuming they didn’t get themselves killed or jailed, which would save him a lot of effort and risk.

This is the part of the book where he poses as a priest (collar and all), who is raising money for his church, and a more inappropriate look for him is hard to imagine. The point is, he takes on several false identities, and sets up a bunch of bank accounts, all in order to set up a convincing enough false identity as a rich Texan/Ecuadorian of American parentage (and citizenship) named Daniel Parmitt, who can infiltrate Palm Beach society and wait for the heist to happen. Parmitt has a mustache (Claire later advises him to make it look like Errol Flynn’s ‘stache, trims it for him herself, between bouts of intercourse). He wears light-colored slacks, colorful shirts, and a yachting cap. Okay, so there is a more inappropriate look for him after all. At least it’s not a cowboy hat.

In order to get high quality fake ID as Parmitt, he goes to a guy Ed Mackey refers him to (a brief phone cameo by Brenda, who is clearly still wondering if she and Parker might end up together someday). Julius Norte, a specialist in this field. He seems professional enough, but when Parker comes back for his papers, Norte tries to kill him, because another client sent some thugs to whack him, so nobody would be alive who knew about his new identity (shades of The Man With the Getaway Face). Parker would know too much if he let him go. Parker has to kill Norte’s hulking bodyguard, and then has a cowed Norte kill the tied-up thugs himself, with a gun Parker then confiscates, so he’ll have leverage over Norte.

Now you see up top where he’s telling these guys they’re too gaudy, that their plan is too complicated, improbable, and risky? It’s not like him to live in a glass house. He’s being at least as gaudy as them. There’s too many moving parts here already for a Parker book, and we’re just 74 pages in.

Then he meets Claire at a hotel in Miami they’ve stayed at before–as soon as he resolved to pull this risky scheme of his, he told her to vacate the house at Colliver Pond in New Jersey, so she couldn’t be taken by his former partners and used as a bargaining chip. She learned something from the events of Deadly Edge, and complies with alacrity. It’s winter, anyway, good excuse to get warm. She’s sitting by the pool when he arrives, wearing a red bikini, and reading Aphra Behn (I think the above quote might help explain both her and her creator’s affinity for that author). He sees her from across the pool, drawing many a lustful glance. And if you’d believe it, he begins reminiscing on how their relationship began.

It had been a while since he had seen her at a different angle like this, coming upon her as though she were a stranger, and it reminded him of the first time they’d met, when he’d opened a hotel room door expecting some flunky driver and had seen this cool and beautiful woman instead. When he told her then he hadn’t expected a woman in the job because it was unprofessional she’d said, “It doesn’t sound like a very rewarding profession,” and already he’d been snagged. Closed off before then, indifferent to the world except as it had to be tamed and manipulated, he hadn’t known he could be snagged, but here she was. And here again. Still here.

Of course he’s snagged, that’s been obvious since the end of The Rare Coin Score, but we’re not supposed to see him thinking about it. It’s supposed to be unstated, implicit, instinctual, oblique. This is too wordy, too self-conscious. This is Stark putting thoughts in Parker’s mind that don’t belong there. And how could Parker be unaware he could be snagged, after all that happened with Lynn in the first book?

(This scene would work for Grofield just fine. He could be meeting his wife Mary, or romancing an actual stranger, as he so often does. In fact, it reads quite a bit like similar scenes between Grofield and one of his blondes, also in warm weather settings, near water.)

But Parker is working now. Yes, his relationship with Claire is different, his sex drive is no longer so cyclical as it once was, but we’ve never seen him show any interest in sex when he’s on the job before now. You can justify it (he’s saying goodbye, just in case, and he’s got some time to kill before the final phase begins), but there’s so much else to justify in the course of this story. It’s a lot of extra work for the reader, who doesn’t get to enjoy Claire’s lithe body as recompense.

But this is the only sex scene in the book, you see (rather on the tame side)–the main female character here isn’t Claire, and isn’t an option for Parker (him being snagged and all), and there had to be some erotic content, given the genre. This is it, plausible or not. Claire is seen no more in the book, but her presence continues to be felt.

As Part 1 ends, Parker leaves her, and drives over the bridge into Palm Beach. In a leased Jaguar. Wearing a yachting cap, a brightly colored shirt, a pencil thin lounge lizard mustache, and a silly-ass playboy’s expression on his face, or at least what he hopes is a reasonable facsimile thereof. It’s maybe a bit like what Jules Feiffer once said about Superman. That Clark Kent is his sardonic commentary on the society he’s blending into. (Yeah, the title character in Kill Bill said the same thing, but he stole that from Jules Feiffer.)

Before he realized they were going to shortchange him, Parker told his former colleagues he didn’t want to know all the details of their heist, so he doesn’t know where this house is, when the heist will take place, or what high society event they’re boosting the jewels from. Now he needs to know all of that, and to establish Daniel Parmitt as a legitimate aspirant to the Palm Beach scene. And for all that, he needs to go house-shopping, for which he needs a real estate agent.

Enter The Amateur in the story, Leslie Mackenzie–this amateur is going to be on Parker’s side for a change. A blonde in her early 40’s, a bit on the hefty side but appealingly so, a penchant for pastel-colored pantsuits. Quite the contrast with Claire (whose hair color remains a mystery to this point in the series.) She shows ‘Daniel’ around, and gives him a bit of background info, as much for our benefit as his. She feels this newb should understand Palm Beach proper isn’t about how much money you have (poor people can’t afford to live there, except as servants of one type or another), but rather how you got it. Some people seemingly have a hard time figuring that out.

“Donald Trump never fit in here,” Leslie said, having pointed out Mar-a-Lago, which for many years had belonged to Mrs. Merriweather Post, who definitely did fit in here, and which after her death had been for years a white elephant on the market–nobody’s inherited money, no matter how much of it there was, could afford the upkeep of the huge sprawling place–until Trump had grabbed it up, expecting it to be his entrée to Palm Beach, misunderstanding the place, believing Palm Beach was about real estate, like New York, never getting it that Palm Beach was about money you hadn’t earned.

“I should be pleased Mr. Trump took over Mar-a-Lago,” Leslie said, “I think we should all be pleased, because we certainly didn’t want it to turn into Miss Havisham’s wedding cake out there, but to be honest with you, I think a place must be just a littledéclassé if Donald Trump has even heard of it.”

(Mr. Westlake certainly did have his eye on Mr. Trump, didn’t he? Did you know dear Mrs. Merriweather-Post gave Mar-a-Lago to the Federal government to be a sort of winter White House, but none of the subsequent Presidents wanted to use it? So it devolved back to her heirs, and they just wanted to sell, but not to that poseur Trump, who would obviously commercialize it in order to afford the upkeep of the place, as indeed he has done. But nobody else wanted it, and he threatened to build stuff that would block its view of the ocean, so they ended up selling it for less than half his original offer. And now Mrs. Merriweather-Post’s dream has been fulfilled. And I can almost hear her screaming from rich people hell, “That’s not what I meant!!!” So picky.)

Westlake obviously spent time in Palm Beach, soaking up the scene, and generally finding it ghastly. The architecture is banal and derivative, the cultural scene barely can be said to exist, it’s all private clubs and mediocre McMansions, and leading citizens who only live there from November through May, and probably in some place with mild summers the rest of the year. Weather is for the poor.

But again, I’m taken aback when we’re told Parker is actually observing the architecture, thinking to himself that it seems inspired by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and of course Parker wouldn’t make any such observation, because he doesn’t care about architecture, except to the extent it makes breaking and entering easier or harder for him. Stark should be making these observations, but somehow he’s projecting his own interests onto Parker in this one. The line between observer and observed is breaking down.

But of course what Parker’s really looking for is the house Melander purchased (partly with Parker’s money), while pretending to be a rich Texan. And he spots it easily enough. Leslie happens to have some sheets on it, useful information, alarm systems, floor plans, and she’s more than willing to hand this over to ‘Daniel’ when he asks, since that house is sold.

Having said goodbye to her for the day, he breaks into the house, finding it deserted, but not quite empty. There’s a few bottles of beer in the fridge, and a metal footlocker full of guns in the garage. He’s found them. They’ll be back, and he’ll be ready. He walks back to his car, only to see Leslie’s car nearby. She followed him. He needs to know how much she’s figured out, and who she might have been talking to, before he kills her for the crime of being stupid.

But she’s not stupid. In the ensuing conversation, that becomes increasingly clear. She saw something wasn’t quite right about Daniel Parmitt–she saw halfway through the mask Parker perpetually puts on around law-abiding citizens, to cover his true self. Her background in selling high-priced real estate means she’s good at background checks, and she knows now there was no Daniel Parmitt until about two months ago (Parker hasn’t figured out yet how much more quickly these things can be checked online–technology is catching up with him).

His interest in the movie star mansion was a bit too obvious. His asking for the info on it when he knew it wasn’t for sale was a dead giveaway. He, like the men he intends to rob and kill, had underestimated how hard it is to pass oneself off as legit in Palm Beach. And he’d underestimated her. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the things about the front he put up that didn’t fit, because most people don’t notice anything that isn’t directly relevant to them. He’s a thief, not a huckster–he counts on that lack of situational awareness in most people to get him through when he misses some crucial detail in his disguises.

Leslie, by contrast, knows very well that if he decides she’s a threat to him, he’ll kill her. But she smells money, and she wants it. She wants out of her life. The same way Mary Deegan grabbed onto Grofield, way back in The Score, she’s grabbing onto him. He’s her ticket out of an unrewarding existence. One way or another. And here we may perceive another little scrap of evidence Westlake might have originally toyed with making this a Grofield novel, but of course The Score was a Parker, so maybe not. Grofield actually does care about architecture. (And sometimes blondes he’s not married to.)

And here comes the scene that probably got this book turned into a movie in the first place (the money shot, if you will). Parker is willing to consider Leslie’s offer to be his native guide to the Palm Beach jungle. But he needs to know she’s not wearing a wire. So she has to strip naked in front of him. Every ad for that damn movie had that scene, with Lopez stripped down to her underthings while Statham checks her out. Well, she was the right age and shape. She wasn’t really the problem with that movie. She wasn’t enough to sell it with, either. We’d already seen all there was to see of Ms. Lopez.

Leslie is a bit of a problem for the novel and the movie. Because she’s the sex interest, but there isn’t going to be any sex. And she’s yet another moving part added to an already over-complex mechanism, though it’s kind of nice, imagining all her parts moving, as she walks. Westlake was going through a phase where he liked to write about amply proportioned blondes, and why not? To some extent, she’s a hybrid of the preacher’s buxom girlfriend from Comeback, and the PR woman from Backflash. But this time she’s a much more central player. She is, in fact, a secondary protagonist, the B-Plot girl, going through an identity crisis, a life transition. But more about that next time.

Parker does his homework on Leslie, which (since he’ll never be an internet guy) means he breaks into the house she shares with her mother and developmentally disabled sister (the book uses an older euphemism). She checks out fine–she is who she says she is, the kind of person who might be willing to risk everything to get a new life. He’s also pleased she didn’t try to use her body to entice him, back at the office, not that there was any chance of that working. Okay, he’ll give her a try. He can still kill her if it doesn’t work out.

They meet again, posting once more as realtor and client, checking out a luxury condo. Mr. Westlake must have had some experience with this type of housing unit (timeshare, maybe), and was none too impressed. If there’s anything more pathetically predictable than the very rich, it’s the people who futilely aspire to join them.

The condos along the narrow strip of island south of the main part of Palm Beach yearn toward a better life: something English, somewhere among the landed gentry. The craving is there in the names of the buildings: the Windsor, the Sheffield, the Cambridge. But whatever they call themselves, they’re still a line of pale concrete honeycombs on a sandbar in the sun.

I’ve never been to Palm Beach, but I’ve been to Hilton Head, and Long Beach Island. It’s pretty much the same everywhere, up and down the intercoastal waterway. Palm Beach just costs more.

Parker puts Leslie to the test, and she better not flunk. He tells her about these guys he worked with, who stole from him, and now he’s going to steal from them–their money and their lives. She gulps a bit, but she’s still in. He tells her what he knows about the heist.

She knows what the auction in question must be–Mrs. Clendon’s jewels. She was the grande dame of Palm Beach, and her collection of baubles and trinkets was the envy of every other society matron there. She willed her jewels to a local bank official who got her interested in improving the local library. They’ll be auctioned off to raise money so that all the hoi polloi there who can’t afford their own personal libraries can obtain free reading material (Let them eat books!).

Leslie is massively let down–this is a dead end. There is no way these guys can get the jewels, they’re too well-guarded; from the bank, to the armored car, to Mrs. Fritz’s house (the newly reigning grande dame), back to the bank again. Parker, just from listening to her descriptions, knows immediately that the weak spot is the house. Full of rich people. Who will be panicked by some explosion or fire, because that’s what these guys do. Hundreds of silly stupid socialites, milling around like sheep–the armed security people won’t dare shoot, won’t even know what to shoot at. In the confusion, they’ll grab the jewels, and get back to their hideout.

There’s no beach by Mrs. Fritz’s house–just a seawall. He figures they’ll come in from the ocean. “Like James Bond?” Leslie asks? “More like Jaws,” Parker responds. You know, I could see him actually paying attention during parts of that movie. But it’s still not a good line for him.

So he goes back to the hideout, and they still aren’t there. He rigs the alarm so that it looks armed, but it’s not. He breaks into their cache of guns, and rigs the firing mechanisms so that they look armed, but ditto. He tapes his trusty little Hi-Standard Snub-nose Sentinel .22 to the underside of a Parsons table (nothing to do with clergymen) where he thinks they’ll have him sitting if they catch him there, and decide to interrogate him.

Oh heck, I might as well post an image. Basically, just another version of the Smith & Wesson Terrier, only the bullets are even smaller. With Parker, size really does not matter. It’s how you use it.

(I’m going to type another niggling little quibble now. Once he starts on his One Man Crime Wave, Parker thinks he needs better guns. He’s only got the Sentinel and a .38 Special Colt Cobra, so in Kentucky he finds a closed gun shop along a sparsely traveled road, hijacks a backhoe from the county Highway Dept and uses it to scoop up a bunch of guns from the display window, of which he picks four, and makes his escape. We’re told he chooses this shop because it doesn’t have any guard dogs, so Parker still has more respect for dogs than people, which tracks.

What does not track is that in the course of his misadventures in this book, pretty much the only gun he uses is the Sentinel, because it’s so easily concealed, and he’s mainly shooting people at extreme close range, not necessarily to kill them but sometimes just to get their attention, let them know he’s serious–for that purpose, a smaller caliber weapon works better. He goes to all this trouble to get better guns, when in reality he had one more gun than he needed already, and the least formidable of them turned out to be the most useful. This really is a book about overkill–on every possible level. Well, I guess that tracks with Palm Beach. Back to synopsis.)

So it’s all going fine. He’s got the information he needs, where the safe house is, when and where the heist will take place. Parker figures he can kick back for a bit now, go see how Claire is doing with Aphra Behn or whatever. This is also really out of character, but what the hell, go with it. Florida does weird things to people. Why not wolves in human form as well?

On his way there there, these two guys he can see are hired killers waylay him outside a restaurant, and drive him into the Everglades. He knows they’re going to kill him, figures it’s something to do with Norte and that guy who wants to kill everybody who knows what his name used to be.

He knows he’s got to make his move before they get to wherever they intend to do him in. He surprises the hoods, makes it out of the car, but the terrain is not favorable, and he gets shot in the back with a rifle, then pushed into the shallow water by the road. Last we see of him, he’s badly wounded, underwater, blacked out, and there’s two guys with guns who want him dead. End Part 2. Part 3 is the round robin section of the book, so we’ll get multiple perspectives, none of them Parker’s.

Earlier in the book, when he’s with Claire, we’re told he’s been shot eight times in his life. Once would be Lynn shooting him in the belt buckle in The Hunter. Another would be Auguste Menlo winging him with his Hi-Standard Derringer in The Mourner. We see him thinking (almost nostalgically) of Little Bob Negli, stinging his ear with his Beretta .25 automatic, in The Seventh. And of course he got pretty seriously plugged by a Colt .45 wielded by the nefarious Baron, in The Handle, but he went right back into action once he woke up. Claire strokes his scars as they lie in bed, and says she’s lucky for him–he hasn’t been shot since he met her. Well, even the strangest of luck has its limits.

This is the first time we know of that he’s been shot up so badly, he might actually die. Only, of course, he won’t. And I have very mixed feelings about how Westlake finagles that–fantastic fortune indeed! I have very mixed feelings about this book. I think that quote I used up top says it all pretty well–this one didn’t really work out for anybody. But I still read it cover to cover the same day I got it out of the library. I still found things to enjoy about it this time (not necessarily the same things as in previous readings).

And I’ll still be back with Part 2 next week. If the Lord of Mar-a-Lago doesn’t blow us all up. I do hope you’re enjoying rich people hell, dear Mrs. Merriweather-Post. I hear the amenities are spectacular. Probably a mite chilly compared to Florida in the summertime, but nothing’s perfect.